ON SOME DIGGINGS NEAR BRASSINGTON, DERBYSHIRE. I31 



placed in the chamber as skeletons, the skulls were sound. 

 Although they offered no direct evidence as to whether they were 

 introduced as skeletons or as corpses, one circumstance tells against 

 the latter ; the fact that some of the skulls were in contact, and 

 that the quantity of earth and bones mixed up with the trunk 

 bones — sufficient to fill up the interstices of a skeleton so as to 

 make a suitable floor upon which to arrange the bones of a 

 succeeding skeleton — was quite insufficient to cover the corpses, 

 point to a condition of things which would render burials im- 

 possible except at long intervals, on account of the intolerable 

 effluvia during the process of decomposition. In fact, no more 

 inconvenient mode of interment of corpses can be imagined. 



Details of Skulls. — The broken condition of the skulls of 

 the chamber is usual in long barrows, and is generally attributed 

 to unequal subsidence of the soil. This, however, would result 

 in displacement, which was not the case at Harborough — the 

 fractures being invisible and the skulls apparently sound until the 

 attempt was made to move them. It is not unlikely that these 

 fractures originated in the skulls themselves. The removal of the 

 gelatinous matters is probably associated with shrinkage, as well 

 as brittleness, and as the rate of removal would never be uniform 

 throughout a skull, it is easy to see that it would be in a state of 

 stress ; and this state of stress, aided by the ever-varying con- 

 ditions of temperature and moisture, must, in a material of 

 increasing brittleness, at length spend itself in fracture. The 

 writer has been able to reconstruct to some extent each of the 

 skulls — four sufficiently so as to warrant plates. The plates give 

 the skulls in perspective ; the general outline at the points of 

 greatest length and width being to scale. As the views were in 

 the first instance traced as projected upon glass, the eye has 

 been relied upon for the smallest details only. Shading is only 

 used where absolutely necessary, and the numerous lines of 

 fracture are withheld, so as to avoid confusion.* 



In the accompanying table, the modes of measurement are 



* It was intended that the plates should show the skulls exactly 3 their 

 actual size, instead of which they are a trifle less than this proportion. 



